“Putin is not Russia!
Several thousand demonstrators, mainly Russians, gathered in Prague on Saturday to denounce the military offensive ordered by President Vladimir Putin in Ukraine and demand an end to the war.
Some 5,000 people, according to the organizers, crossed the historic center of Prague chanting: "Russia without Putin" or "Freedom for Russia, peace for Ukraine".
Прага прямо сейчас.
Марш "Русские против Путина".
pic.twitter.com/5ZGdHsE9m4
— Илья Косыгин (@ilyakosygin) March 26, 2022
“The Czech Republic is home to 40,000 Russians and until now these Russians were unknown to the Czechs,” protest organizer Anton Litvin said.
“We want to show that the Russians who live here are against Putin, against the war, that they support Ukraine,” he added, an artist and activist who has lived in Prague for ten years.
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“Every sane human being should oppose Putin”
"The Russians here are not Putinists, they are Europeans," said the activist, holding a blue and white flag like those waved by the protesters.
The white blue red Russian tricolor has been reinvented for the occasion, he explained.
The signs held up by the demonstrators also called on the Russians "to speak out and fight the real enemy, not Ukraine", and described the Russian president as a killer.
Heading to Wenceslas Square, protesters also called on Vladimir Putin to release political prisoners, including opponent Alexei Navalny, who was sentenced this week to nine years in a harsh-regime colony.
A sign "Russia is not Putin" held on the sidelines of the Prague demonstration against the war in Ukraine, Saturday March 26.
REUTERS/David W Cerny
"Any sane human being should oppose Putin," said Peter Bankov, a Belarusian-born designer who lived in Moscow before moving to Prague.
"Every action is either good or bad and it has an author, this time evil has an obvious author, that's why I'm against Putin," he said.
Sobbing and anger
Olga Bouzenkova, a businesswoman who left Moscow for Prague a year ago, burst into tears.
“We are against the war, against Putin, against what the Russian army is doing, against the killings,” she explains between two sobs.
The war "changed everything", she adds, referring to an elderly Ukrainian relative who had to flee kyiv to reach Cologne in Germany.
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"She remembers how the Germans bombed kyiv in 1941, and now these Germans have received her and granted her refugee status," says Olga Bouzenkova.
“Russia has now become a fascist country.
It's a repeat of 1938. We can't ignore it.
Putin must be stopped,” she concludes.
